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Curious Souls Get Together -15th meeting!

On May 8,2016, Sunday, we met at Sircaci 14 in Yenikoy Istanbul. It was Mother’s Day and the traffic was surprisingly much more challenging that it could ever get. I later learned that President visited Tarabya, just next door to where were, and this now explains to me why the traffic was so horrific!

The first TEDTalk we watched was was the talk of Maz Jobrani with the title: “A Saudi, an Indian and an Iranian walk into a Qatari Bar…” Mozrani is an Iranian-American comedian that is the founding member of a group called; “Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.” During our discussion, we shared interesting anecdotes on our own experiences of cultural differences especially the funny differences like how many times you need to kiss when you meet a friend :-). Here is the talk:

The second talk we watched was Dave Isay‘s talk with the title: “Everybody around you has a story the world needs to hear.” Dave Isay is the winner of TED Prize that is given each year to an idea or a wish and in this TED Talk, he explains how he founded the organisation called StoryCorps and how he came up with the idea. He gives touching examples from the stories recorded, explains how StoryCorps has evolved into the single largest collection of human voices ever recorded and voices his vision to make it global. Here is his interesting talk:

The third video I selected for our group was an interesting performance with the title: “The dancer, the singer, the cellist … and a moment of creative magic.” It was not possible for us to watch the video with full concentration and clear sound (we were meeting in a restaurant-cafe) so please watch it now, at your own places where you can watch and enjoy without distraction:

The last video we watched was the interesting talk of Amanda Palmer with the title “Art of Asking.” Amanda Palmer is a singer, songwriter, blogger and provocateur who clearly pushes boundaries in both her art and lifestyles and she made international headlines when she raised nearly $1.2 million via Kickstarter, instead of $100.000 through her 25.000 fans who pre-ordered her albul called “Theatre is Evil.”

You can guess that our discussion on this subject was also very interesting.

After watching the videos and our discussions, those who stayed at the venue for some food and catching up with friends, had a chance to listen to the beautiful Italian songs that our friend, Mumtaz Unel, who sang beautiful Italian songs for us.

I would like to thank all participants for joining me at this event and also specifically thank Mumtaz for giving us the pleasure to listen to his wonderful music!